Even if you're not ready to commit your critical business applications to services, you can still find dozens of sites that provide invaluable resources for small companies. Sites such as AllBusiness or Office.com offer free advice and loads of templates that help you generate the forms and documents essential to every business. Other sites, like Bigstep and BizLand, mainly provide tools for building, hosting, and operating e-commerce sites.

Even businesses that aren't ready to use Web-based front- or back-office services can benefit from these resources. Mary Shank Rockman, principal owner of MSR Communications, a San Franciscobased PR and marketing firm, doesn't feel she needs Oracle's tools, but she was in heaven when she happened across AllBusiness.

When Rockman launched her company, she quickly realized how much she'd taken for granted in the corporate world. Suddenly, the things that had always been just down the hallway in human resources were nowhere to be found. At first, she assumed the task would be inordinately expensive and time consuming for her fledgling six-person companyand ten years ago it might have beenbut then she turned to AllBusiness, which served up all the standard forms she needed free of chargefrom W4s to W9sas well as sample documents to pull together an MSR employee handbook and many other essential HR items.

"I used templates for all types of documents, involving everything from staffing and recruiting issues to vacation forms," says Rockman. With the help of AllBusiness, she put together a full employee manual in less than 15 hours, and her only major expense was having her lawyer spend an hour or two reviewing it.

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